Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> What did Clinton put up an all-out fight for? NAFTA and little else.
> And his health insurance plan was an abomination - a deeply
> compromised, incomprehensibly complex thing that no one but a few
> policy wonks could get enthusiastic about. And its defeat was the
> political death of any sane health care financing plan. But he meant
> well I'm sure.
>
I've never been convinced he meant well -- at least the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to claim invisible good intentions trump visible results.
But back to Justin's core point: In response to the claim that Nixon only "did good things" because he was forced to Justin replied _exactly_. And I would add that it would seem reasonable to make the same summary of the Roosevelt & Johnson administrations.
The historic function of the Democratic Party is to foreclose the rise of movements that would force anyone to do anything. I think I've mentioned before that during the sitdown strikes, FDR was (a) making public declarations of neutrality (plague on both their houses) he was privately on the phone with Governor Murphy of Michigan urging him to call out the National Guard to suppress the strikes. I think that can stand as a permanent icon of the DP in the 20th century.
Carrol
P.S. I suspect that Nathan would really be a much happier person if he could throw off the nightmarish weight of having to defend the DP and the AFL-CIO. I sort of feel sympathy for him.